Brett Salahub's Discussion Topic for 2009-11-26 Thursday: Gurdjieff

List of insightful statements and questions from this session:

We are all arriving at the same pier (dock) coming from quite diverse locations
How important is the search to you? Could it be questioning?
How can we be curious? How can we be empty?
Journey vs the destination?
Number of paths? Being aware of new paths?
When discussing ask: Tell back what I just told you.
We are not what we think we are: Who is the true me?
Wisdom in seeing insignificance of ourselves as a physical being. We often deny this fact that our physical existence is insignificance.
Suggestion: listen how you introduce yourself, do you say "I am Paavo", or do you say "My name is Paavo"? It may reveal how you identify with your name, instead of your real self.
The mind may lie, but the body cannot lie! [SO LISTEN TO THE BODY!]

Few Gurdjieff concepts were touched upon:

We are not who we think we are and we lie to ourselves.

This was talked about in a variety of ways. It was easy to see how whole countries, and societies can lie to themselves, by looking at the political scene and wars and such. However it was discussed that we can lie to ourselves at an individual level.

Before breaking into groups and talking about how we can lie to ourselves, Brett read this quote: "Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you think you are, that you overestimate yourself, therefore that you lie to yourself. That you lie to yourself always, every moment, all day long, your whole life." (This challenging "4th way" quote is by Mme de Salzmann, pupil of Gurdjieff for nearly 30 years)

Multiple I's, or programs that run automatically if we are not aware of them, and they affect our observations of our reality.

On flip chart was a diagram of person in circle.

Brett borrowed the idea from Anthony Phelips to draw on circle lenses with which we observe our surroundings. These lenses are distorted and subjective. It is one reason why people often think there is no Truth: there is only "my truth" and "your truth."

How this relates to Gurdjieff, is that he said a person is made up of multiple "I's" that come from their environment. Another very good analogy in today's language is to call them "programs": something that run automatically without us being aware of them. The programs were put into us by our conditioning. The most powerful of these programs were put there during our deeply impressionable childhood years.

The Gurdjieffiean point of this is that we observe, and interact, with our environment, not with our true self, but with using a variety of distorted lenses, and a multitude of programs that all claim to be the real I, or our true self. Yet these are all artificial constructs of the personality, who are lying when they claim to be the real "I". The real I, or perhaps the "essence" (A word Gurdjieff used too) of a person remains hidden and silent inside.

From this we also get to the key idea of "self remembering" that Gurdjieff taught. This process of self observation is an essential part of the 4th way Work as it is used to observe and identify these false "I's", these artificial programs, that claim to be the real person. One is completely at the mercy of these automatic responses if he is unaware of them. A man cannot begin to change himself until he can see them.

Then what happens next, and I think relates to what stuck in Pekka's mind from coming across Gurdjieff, that this "self remembering" leads to seeing the real "inner" person, instead of just the false personality.

We don't understand each other:

This came up because we noted that if we don't define some of the key words we use in discussion, we easily misunderstand each other, and we don't even realize it!

"no one understands anyone else. Two men can say the same thing with profound conviction but call it by different names, or argue endlessly together without suspecting that they are thinking exactly the same". --from In Search Of The Miraculous

The Three centers of Man
This topic we did not have time to get into, but often in our discussions, the group has made distinctions between things that we do at the intellectual level, and actions and decisions that we make at a different level: the emotional level. Ting has been reminding us also, that there is the physical level: the body too.


Therefore, because of these discussions Brett drew a picture on the flip chart:
The 3 centers of man, also called the 3 lower centers:
Lower Emotional center
Lower Intellectual center
Lower Moving center (sometimes combined with instinctive)

Higher Centers of Man
There was only time to note that Gurdjieff believed that there were also 3 higher centers that complement the 3 lower centers:

Sex center
Higher Emotional Center
Higher Intellectual Center.

We did not have time to talk about those, but Gurdjieff says that a man that does work on himself and advances, can one day get connection with his higher centers. This will make a complete and immortal man.

Conclusion

Gurdjieff was quite different from many of the new age gurus of today, who too often simply teach that emptying the mind and being at peace is the ultimate achievement of man. Gurdjieff taught there was something far more deeper and permanent that a man could reach for. This can be a topic for further study, what Gurdjieff was getting at. I recommend the book In Search Of the Miraculous, as an introduction to find out if that material resonates with you. Obviously this is not for everyone! Is it your kind of study? Or is it a book just to be thrown against the wall?

Final quote, that I did not give at the session but wraps up the thoughts

Gurdjieff: All the people you see, all the people you know, all the people you may get to know, are machines, actual machines working solely under the power of external influences, as you yourself said. Machines they are born and machines they die. ... Even now, at this very moment, while we are talking, several millions of machines are trying to annihilate one another. What is the difference between them? Where are the savages and where are the intellectuals? They are all alike . . . "But there is a possibility of ceasing to be a machine. It is of this we must think and not about the different kinds of machines that exist.

[...]
It is possible to stop being a machine, but for that it is necessary first of all to know the machine. A machine, a real machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself. When a machine knows itself it is then no longer a machine, at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already begins to be responsible for its actions.“

[From: In Search Of The Miraculous, by P. D. OUSPENSKY]